Easily distracted by shiny objects.

June 28, 2017

A new mirror brings some needed light into my office. It looks crooked in pic but is actually hanging straight.

How tedious it is to be unwell! No chemo this week, because my platelets are not yet back in the normal range. Thoracentesis today because fluid has built up around my lungs again. My vision and hearing are deteriorating. I have water retention in my feet, ankles and legs, even though I take "water" pills. Four times a day I get a little buzz from the hydrocodone pills, a reminder that life can be beautiful. I take them mainly to control the mucus secretions in my lungs. What I resent is the feeling that staying alive (and sane!) is work, after a lifetime of taking being alive (and sane!) for granted!

We begin the work day (ie, every day) with the strategy session in my office: checking the drugs, appointments, shopping, meals, etc. We read the paper and talk over the news. I feel busy, but mostly I have to take it easy, and that is a bore.

Our daughter who was visiting us left yesterday. She actually enjoyed being here as a contrast to her busy life on the Mainland. She did a lot of cooking, and we have a freezer full of entrees.

Ronni Bennett reports from her hospital bed after surgery for pancreatic cancer. She is a good reporter and even funny about what's happening to her. Hawaii Senator Mazie Hirono had surgery yesterday, to remove a cancerous rib. I worry that she won't be able to get enough rest; she is a key figure in the Senate. But truly I don't see how she will be able to keep up the pace demanded for her job for long.

We are continuing to watch The Handmaid's Tale--engrossing but hardly upbeat-- one episode at a time, because each episode needs some thinking over. This series illustrates how precarious women's gains are, how easily taken away.

The bohemian man may have idealised women as muses and models but he was unhampered by bourgeois obligations to be faithful or to earn money, though rarely was he so unconventional as to undertake any housework or childcare. The bohemian woman with children was as much shackled to domesticity as any solicitor’s wife, but without the staff a middle-class household would command or the security. Meanwhile the door to a respectable life had slammed shut behind her.

What I observed in the late 50s and early 60s in Berkeley and San Francisco was the carry over from Beatnik Bohemia to Hippiedom. Issues of respectability and financial worries were real enough to me and most other women during this period of regression. Pregnancy loomed as a threat. The mistreatment many women endured at the hands of "revolutionary" and/or "artistic" or merely heroin addicted (but entitled!) men was a factor in the rise of second wave feminism. My personal brushes with Beatnik and Hippie men made me impervious to their dubious charms! They were perfectly fine with walking all over me and then moving on.

That's why, when Bernie came along, I was not thrilled! I figured he had some pretty sordid backstories that his opponents were sitting on, because he was a useful fool* and could help to defeat the hated Hillary. Unlike the original Bohemians, he is obsessed with money, and left politics has been a good money maker for him.

The Cubans were not taken in by the jovial but evil Eldridge Cleaver and his Panthers, when they showed up. Why oh why was Cleaver lauded by many on the left? This article, also from the LRB, Havana 1968, by Andrew Sinclair illuminates so much:

His misunderstandings with the Cubans were more a matter of street wit than substance. They took his asides as true statements. Given an old crone to act as a cook and spy on the apartment, he said: ‘If I got to have a cook, make her young, white and willing.’ This was reported as wants a young white slave. When he saw a black Cadillac in the street, he observed: ‘I want to get me a big black Caddie for this big black ass.’ This was reported as wants big american car. When he bought some grass to smoke in Oriente province and was asked his source, he said: ‘Fidel gave it to me.’ This was put down as says he got marijuana from castro. And when he sang in the lobby of the Havana Libre hotel, ‘I guess I’ll have a ball with Haydée Santamaría,’ his dossier read: wants also to rape cuban official women.

Sinclair may find Cleaver witty; I just think he insults women. But so many of those men talked this way, all the time. What's to forgive here? Just, oh that was the times, you know!

Sullivan makes it sound like such a lark:

... news had spread of our preparations for armed resistance, and Marianne had carried a personal letter from Cleaver to Castro. It was clear that we were more trouble than we were worth. Castro had no intention of provoking another Bay of Pigs by allowing the Panthers to invade Mississippi in their rubber boat, but also knew the damage that would be done to the Cuban image if foreigners were eliminated in a firefight. Our passports were restored to us. Places were found on the Cuban airline to Madrid for Marianne and me, although she was only a couple of weeks from giving birth; and the Panthers were booked to Algeria, which had agreed to accept them, rather too far away for them to mount any invasion of the United States overnight. We were all taken for a last day on the beach at Santa María del Mar, the perfect finale to our Cuban excursion.

These people were loads of trouble but not serious at all!

*Remember his attempted audience with the Pope? I think the inability of men like Sanders to feel shame is remarkable.

June 26, 2017

So much happening, can't keep up. My daughter is leaving tomorrow after an all-too short visit. This is going to be a busy week of appointments, chemo, a thoracentesis (sp). More tomorrow! Some fascinating reads, but I want to be able to give them the attention they deserve before spouting off about them.

June 22, 2017

One aspect of privilege is that the privileged person believes he/she is not supposed to fail. That failure is a great injustice if it happens to him or her. But everyone loses, sooner or later! I suspect that this is one source of the white rage that drives the Trump agenda. Joe Blow has worked all his life and has accomplished many things, but maybe he's old and sick. How unjust! It must be the fault of those blacks, living off the government.

I found an excellent short self-help book by Brandon Adams, titled Personal Organization for Degenerates, that provides guidelines for people who are not accustomed to thinking of themselves as losers. The author is a man of privilege. He has a lot of wise things to say about dealing with losing when you are fixated on the idea that you are a winner, or should be a winner. He does not make the expectation of success and the great life the theme of his work but the expectation of success stood out to me, as I read his book, as one possible cause of the Trump rebellion. I also see a version of this notion of success owed to the righteously privileged with the Bernie bots. His older fans loved the 60s and communes and the peace movement and all that stuff. What they wanted, as Katha Pollitt says, was a welfare state that would provide the basics for women and children, leaving the men to follow their bliss and ascend to greatness.And they no longer had to worry about the draft!

I think the advice in this book is most effective for those of us who have not been impeded by being targeted by race-based prejudice, the nature of our sexuality, poverty and so on. Less favored people expect failure and have developed their strategies.

The most basic thing Adams points out is that we are fixated on our younger selves, or who we were before some life changing misfortune. Denying that, fighting that, is a very common road to casacading failure. As Adams says, "A mental anchoring takes place when we are younger that prevents us from making intelligent adjustments with age." He gives the example of the middle aged man who works out to the point of exhaustion when he would do better taking a long walk.

When trapped by circumstances or really just being on a downward path, or "tilt," as he calls it, the temptation is to make really bad decisions out of the need to do something, anything, to deal with the crisis. Since we are all rushing toward failure and doom at about the same rate, if we slow down we might be able to delay our arrival! Sometimes doing nothing, just letting events unfold, is the best strategy.

The Trump victory made me so sick that I could hardly stir for days. Millions had a similar reaction. Then I was diagnosed with lung cancer. I think I can say that I made the right decisions for the circumstances. and literally saved my own life. As Adams suggests, I simplified my daily routine, studied my situation, got a mentor (or coach, as he names such a person), and avoided making drastic decisions. My conclusion has been to get my treatment here, and I think it's the right thing to do.

My realistic assessment of the political situation is that, as a person with little power, there is not much I can do, and the left may fail.

So, in spite of my distress, I am just stepping back now and studying and observing events. I think a lot about Mazie Hirono though, valiantly carrying on her work in Congress after having had major cancer surgery. I ask myself if she is being wise. What are the chances of winning here? Is it worth it to endanger herself for the sake of making a difference in the fight against the Trump administration? I don't know.

I felt quite good yesterday. I am delighted to report that the tumor (s) has shrunk. So six months out from diagnosis, I am less cancerous than I was then. My platelet count is down, which means I will have to wait a week to commence with my fifth round of a six round course of treatment. I will be seeing the oncologist tomorrow. The cancer will win in the end, but every good day is a victory.

Update: Today was a setback. No energy at all. This seems to be the way it goes. I am very glad my daughter is coming tomorrow.

Schatz is a Democratic Party man, straight down the line. The way the video inserts clips of Trump underscores the contrast between a human dumpster like Trump and a man of integrity like Schatz. I hope Schatz runs for President. After watching the vid both Terry and I hooted and applauded! Really nice work on the part of Big Island Video News.

I haven't felt too well the past several days, but I am doing things anyway. Last night we went to an event at the Lyman Museum in Hilo on the subject of the lynching of Katsu Goto.

The film makers and Dr. Erika Hori, "a historian who has conducted extensive research on Goto" have got a fascinating topic to work on. The film documentary will be distributed in August and will eventually be available on You Tube. We saw excerpts and had some discussion about the life and death of this complicated person and about how the plantation economy changed Hawaii from a self-sustaining society to an export driven sugar economy. A couple of things struck me: Goto was a well educated man who was excited by Western ideas. He was not a simple plantation worker, as I had always assumed. Why did he come to Hawaii? I was also intrigued by the way Western law was set up and enforced in Hawaii. Courts, lawyers, judges...

9:03 (Hawaii time) Too bad that he has spent his life telling lies. He is the kind of lawyer and politician who gives these professions such a bad name. His cracker accent and appeals to the deity turn me off, but his fans must like watching how he's outsmarting libruls like us, hampered as we are by our allegiance to the facts. Now he is defending his honor, like the true Southern gentleman he is! "We are coming after yew!" He warns all those drug dealers! This is too boring for words.

9:20 He (seemingly) inadvertently fumbles and lets on that he knows everything but is not going to tell anyone what he knows. He cites "privileges." Of course this could also be a veiled threat. That he has got the goods on people and they had better shut up.

There is a German word for men like Sessions: Giftzwerg. Direct translation: poisonous dwarf. Behind that folksy facade lurks an enraged monster, bent on revenge against everyone who has ever made him feel small. He embodies Arendt's expression, the "banality of evil."

June 12, 2017

What a nice weekend we've had! For the first time since my cancer diagnosis in January, Terry and I went on an evening walk in our neighborhood. It's taken this long for me to return to normal levels of activity. What a pleasure it was to stop and chat with some neighbors I haven't seen for a while and get caught up on their news and gossip. I noted how much home improvement was going on. Our neighborhood is choice, and we are all invested in taking good care of it.

My Human Touch Perfect Chair arrived!

I believe every invalid should have one of these. Yes, it was very expensive, but already I feel the benefits. I can really relax, because I can adjust it to exactly the level of comfort I want. Terry likes it, too, and tends to be found "trying it out" when I'm not using it.

I also made two delicious soups!

One was a gazpacho. The base was organic tomato juice and organic chicken broth. To these I added chopped onion, several cloves of crushed garlic, chopped cucumber, chopped red bell pepper, celery, flat Italian parsley, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt and pepper. I let it sit in the fridge for a couple of hours to cool it down and blend the flavors. I served it cold with a dollop of sour cream and a few croutons. (You don't cook this, I forgot to add.)

Recipe: revised

I bottle (qt) organic tomato juice

I small carton (1/2 pt) organic chicken broth

I medium onion, any kind, chopped (revision: a small onion is better. Best of all is several green onions, chopped, with some of the green part.)

Three cloves garlic, crushed.

One cucumber, chopped

Couple of stalks celery, strings removed, chopped

One cup Italian flat parsley, chopped

One small red bell pepper, chopped

Olive oil, 2 tbsp

Balsamic vinegar, 2 tbsp

Salt and pepper to taste

Sour cream (or yogurt) and croutons for topping.

The other soup was just a variety of vegetables, chicken stock or broth, 1/3 rasher of bacon, condiments. Throw everything in the slow cooker, turn on high and let it simmer for hours and hours. Beans are a good addition, but be sure they are canned or pre-cooked. For some reason I can't fathom, thyme really enhances the flavor of these soups.

Good nutrition is the absolute key to good cancer treatment results, so I'm on it! Terry learned a lot about cooking when I was so sick and has developed a new respect for my awesomeness as a cook. He did a pretty good job of covering the situation, but he is the kind who has to measure and be precise. He's a chemist!